At the Ballot Boxes or in the Streets and Factories:
Economic Contention in the Visegrad Group
Ondřej Císař and Jiří Navrátil
Introduction
As demonstrated by recent social movement research as
well as by the contributions in this very volume,
economic contention is coming to the fore of scholarly
attention as a result of popular reactions to the current
recession and the related austerity policies introduced
in many countries across the globe (but see, for example,
Kousis and Tilly 2005). In this chapter, we broaden this
crisis-focused perspective and look at a longer time
period in four countries that were affected by the crises
of economic transformation and austerity packages well
before the current wave.
The goal of this chapter is to analyse protest on
issues of economy, welfare, and social policies
(hereinafter ‘economic protest’) in four very similar
national environments: the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Hungary, and Poland, the so-called Visegrad Group (V4).
In many respects, these countries represent a uniform
pattern of post-communist transformation, in both
political and economic terms. They are typically taken as
four cases of a single model of transition political
economy, which is currently conceptualized as the
embedded neoliberal regime (Bohle and Greskovits 2012).
Accordingly, their pattern of collective action has thus
far been captured and explained by a single narrative
that starts with the quiescent 1990s (Greskovits 1998;
Vanhuysse 2006) and is followed by the end to patience
brought about by the current Great Recession (Kriesi
2014; Beissinger and Sasse 2014). In contrast to this
perspective, the present chapter analyses the variegated
level of economic protest across the selected countries
and the dynamics of protest within them.
First, we explore the dynamics of economic protest
in the four countries in the last 20 years, looking at
grievances and most importantly the political dynamics
behind protests. Second, we look at the difference in the
protest magnitude across them. Probably surprisingly,
given the usually uniform treatment of these countries in
terms of the level of economic protest, they do not form
a homogeneous group; in fact, the Czech Republic and
Slovakia are far less contentious than Hungary and
Poland. Since the available theories do not seem to
explain this difference, the main goal of this chapter is
to develop, using a comparative method, a theoretical
argument explaining the variegated level of economic
protest across the countries. We argue that the
explanation must be sought in the overall structure of
the political conflict of the post-communist countries
analysed. In a nutshell, economic protest emerges under
the conditions of a suppressed economic cleavage in the
field of party politics.
1
Theories of Post-communist Economic Contention
In the early 1990s, Central-Eastern Europe faced a double
challenge, namely, to transform both its politics and its
economy (further compounded by a state-building process
in Slovakia). While in the political arena democratic
institutions were expected to replace the undemocratic
ones, capitalism was to take over centrally planned
economies (see Offe 1996). At the same time, when
economic restructuring was expected to produce groups of
impoverished people, these people were given
opportunities to express their grievances in the newly
institutionalized democratic institutions. Seemingly, all
the conditions for a big political protest were in place:
the grievances produced by structural changes and the
opportunities provided by the opening up
(democratization) of political institutions (Snow and
Soule 2010; Tarrow 2011). Based on the logic of
mainstream social movement theories, an outburst of
protest was the expected outcome, but contrary to initial
fears it never occurred.
The strange absence of economic protest during the
first transition decade became one of the most prominent
theoretical puzzles in transitional political economy.
Why did Central-East Europeans not erupt in protest when
pressed by economic hardships? In a nutshell, three
answers were put forward in the literature: one institutional
(1), one grievance-based (2), and one policy-based (3). (1)
According to Ekiert and Kubik (1998, 2001), who focus on
2
Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and former GDR, limited access
to tripartite institutions and the fragmentation of the
labour movement chiefly account for the lack (except to
some extent in Poland) of economic protest in Central-
East European countries. According to these authors,
owing to its pre-1989 tradition of contentious politics
Poland was still the most contentious country in the
early 1990s (1989–1993). (2) Béla Greskovits (1998) finds
possible explanations in a host of structural
characteristics of post-communist countries, such as the
lack of extreme inequality (the source of relative
deprivation – and thus grievances), an established
protest culture (the source of protest repertoire), or
young people in urban areas ready to be mobilized (the
social bases of protest). He also cites the rise of
social expenditures, the core of the third explanation.
(3) Focusing on the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland,
Pieter Vanhuysse (2004, 2006) argues that the subdued
populations in these transforming countries were the
result of a ‘divide and pacify’ style of social policies,
which were designed to prevent any potential disruption
in these countries. While there were different paths
across the region, such as strategic retirement and pro-
employment labour market policies, they all resulted in
decreasing protest potential. Moreover, Vanhuysse
challenges Ekiert and Kubik’s picture of Poland as the
most contentious country, although his data also
3
demonstrate that it was more contentious than other post-
communist countries (Vanhuysse 2004: 428).
With the exception to some extent of Ekiert and
Kubik, who in terms of protest set Poland apart from the
other post-communist countries, these accounts focus on
explaining the situation of these countries as a group.
In other words, they compare the situation of post-
communist countries either to the original expectations
of a greater degree of transformation protest or to other
groups of countries, such as the Latin American region
(Greskovits 1998). Those who focus on the end of the
initially calm transformation period opt for the same
strategy and try to explain how the current economic
crisis brought an end to the previous quiet period in the
region as a whole.
Drawing on data from 18 East-European countries
after 2007 and on focused paired comparisons, Beissinger
and Sasse (2014) claim that the recession did indeed
bring about the political mobilization of East European
populations and that it was funnelled by socioeconomic
deprivation. They contend that while it is easier to
endure economic hardships for a first time and under the
conditions of optimistic expectations (such as in the
1990s), it is much more difficult to do so for a second
time and while simultaneously lacking prospects of a
bright future: ‘The stark contrast between the relatively
more “patient” or quiescent protest responses in Eastern
Europe during the transition to capitalism in the 1990s
4
and the more contentious protest responses to the Great
Recession (even though they both involved deep economic
pain) raises broader questions about the conditions under
which individuals mobilize collectively against economic
hardship. “Patience,” it seems, is much harder to sustain
the second time around.’ (ibid.: 365)
Comparing Western and Eastern European responses to
the crisis and focusing on the interplay of electoral and
protest politics, Kriesi (2014) first shows that in both
regions (with the exceptions of Poland and Slovakia and
in Eastern Europe together with the rates of economic
growth) budgetary deficits played a significant role in
explaining protest voting. Moreover, ‘in Central and
Eastern European countries in particular, the magnitude
of the economic crisis mattered mostly in combination
with preexisting homemade corruption and political
scandals’. (ibid: 328)
Going beyond a macro-regional comparison and drawing
on four case studies, Kriesi claims that extra-
institutional protest mobilization was universally
triggered by the adoption of austerity policies. Most
importantly, Kriesi shows that protest brings important
implications for elections, thus underscoring the
interplay between party and protest politics. In this
chapter, we draw on and further develop this interaction-
based explanation. We focus on four very similar countries
that however differed in terms of their protest
magnitude. We show that this difference can hardly be
5
explained by socioeconomic indicators, since they are not
associated with patterns of economic protest. The
explanation we intend to develop resides in the
differences in the general structure of political
conflict, and in particular we highlight the cleavage
structure and the configuration of party politics as key
to explaining cross-country differences in economic
protest.
Drawing on the more or less recently reinvigorated
interest in the interplay of protest and
institutionalized party-based politics (for example
Goldstone 2003; della Porta and Diani 2006; Kriesi at al.
2012; McAdam and Tarrow 2013; Hutter and Kriesi 2013;
della Porta 2015; Kriesi in this volume), we see them as
two fields of action that influence each other (Fligstein
and McAdam 2012: 91): ‘Typically the process is set in
motion by some exogenous change that is perceived by at
least two actors as posing a significant threat to, or
opportunity for, the realization of group interest.’ With
respect to economic interests, the field of party
politics has clearly played a more decisive role in the
post-communist democratizing context, with the field of
protest mostly reacting to developments in the political
party field.
Like the literature on radical right mobilization
(Giugni et al. 2005), and in contrast to the traditional
political opportunity structure-based arguments that see
strongly economically defined left parties as
6
instrumental to the mobilization of protest, we expect a
substitutive relation between the fields of party and
protest politics. Drawing on Piven and Cloward, Kriesi at
al. (2012: 190) label this the countervailing thesis,
which expects protest and party politics to move ‘in
opposite directions: the more contested and salient an
issue in the electoral area becomes, the less salient it
is expected to become in the protest politics arena’. An
economically mobilized field of protest can be expected
to form if political parties do not articulate
socioeconomic cleavages in the field of institutionalized
politics.
Theoretically, we draw here on the conceptualization
of inter-field relations put forward by Fligstein and
McAdam (2012) and Kriesi et al. (2012), and relate it to
the literature on transition (Offe 1996; Stark and Bruszt
1998; Greskovits 1998; Bohle and Greskovits 2012). As we
already noted, transition involved two major tasks,
democratization and marketization, the latter of which
constituted a source of major grievances that could be
articulated in the newly constituted democratic politics.
When political parties articulated these grievances in
the form of a socioeconomic cleavage, they crowded out
protest collective action and vice versa: in countries
where socioeconomic grievances were not articulated by
the parties, protest actors were given an opportunity to
constitute a field of contentious politics around this
issue.
7
Here we see the key difference between our two
groups of countries, which is that after the fall of
communism their main conflict lines developed in
different ways. While in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
the main conflict line was centred on socioeconomic
issues, in Hungary and Poland these issues never played
such a role. In short, while in the first two countries
socioeconomic issues formed the main cleavage in the
political party field, in the latter two other issues
assumed the main structuring role in the political
conflict. As a result, in the Czech Republic and Slovakia
these issues were articulated mostly by parties, while in
Poland and Hungary they were ‘left’ to the field of
protest politics to articulate. We would argue that the
‘suppressed’ articulation of socioeconomic issues in
party/electoral politics in Hungary and Poland helps
explain the higher levels of economic protest in these
countries.
Data and Methods
Our chapter is based on a protest event analysis. The
protest event is defined here as either an actual
gathering of at least three people convened in a public
space in order to make claims that bear on the interests
of an institution/collective actor, or a petition
addressed to an institution/collective actor (see Tilly
1995). Only real episodes of collective action are
included; threats of resorting to collective action, such
8
as strike alerts, were excluded. The dataset consists of
all events in which some socioeconomic issue was raised,
i.e. an issue related to monetary or fiscal policies,
taxes, wages, social policies, welfare issues etc. We
included events organized between January 1991 and
December 2010 in which a petition was not the only or
main protest strategy. The dataset comprises 754 events
in the Czech case, 852 in Slovakia, 4042 in Poland and
2624 events in Hungary. The unit of analysis is a year.
We used the electronic archives of the Czech News
Agency (ČTK), the News Agency of the Slovak Republic
(TASR), the Hungarian News Agency Corporation (MTI), and
the Polish Press Agency (PAP), and searched for selected
keywords in all electronically available news stories.
There is, however, a possibility of bias in the sources
we use stemming from general problems associated with
protest event analysis. First, the use of data from
nationwide press agencies may cause local events to be
underrepresented; second, violent and controversial
events may be overrepresented. On the other hand, the
agency’s electronic archives include information on all
the important events that have taken place in the
selected countries. The archives certainly represent the
single most important source of event data, because,
unlike various newspapers, they contain no explicit
political bias in favour of or against a particular type
of events or actors. For example, while strikes and
events related to the activities of trade unions tend to
9
be overrepresented in leftist newspapers, events of this
type are usually underrepresented in papers leaning to
the political right (Koopmans and Rucht 2002).
In order to measure protest, we used Tilly’s index
of protest magnitude (Tilly 1978: 95-97; Ekiert and Kubik
2001: 121) based on the multiplied attendance, duration,
and frequency of collective action for a particular
country in a given year. Therefore, the duration of the
protest and attendance at the event were recorded. When
the exact number of participants was not available
(several dozen, several hundred etc.), the lowest
estimate was coded (20, 200 etc.). We also used
additional data. The Net Replacement Rate for Average
Production Worker (specifically, single-earner family and
two-child model) representing the ratio of the net
unemployment insurance benefit to net income at the
average wage level was used as the indicator of the
generosity of social policies/the welfare state in the V4
countries (Van Vliet and Caminada 2012). This indicator
represents a key aspect of social policies in the
analysed countries (for a different measurement see Myant
and Drahokoupil 2010: 185-212) and, most importantly, the
data are available for the period and countries under
study, with the only exception of the last year (2010).
Drawing on Kriesi (2014), we combine two economic
indicators to measure economic hardships, i.e. economic
grievances in a particular country: the annual GDP growth
rate and the annual unemployment rate. We get our
10
‘grievance index’ by subtracting the unemployment rate
from GDP growth, which provides an annual measure of
economic grievances. The more negative the value of this
index is, the worse the economic conditions it
represents.
Dynamics of Economic Protest in V4 Countries
When standardized for population size, the most intensive
level of protest activities occurred in 1999 in Poland
(against the Buzek government’s reforms in agriculture
and healthcare) and in 2004 in Hungary (against the
reforms in the mining industry and healthcare). Czech and
Slovak economic protest did not even come close to this
level of protest magnitude (see Figure 1). Even if we
disregard these two main peaks of protest in Poland and
Hungary, the annual magnitude of protest is still much
higher in these two countries than it is in the Czech
Republic and Slovakia (see Figure 1), where the
distribution of protest remains much steadier over the
two decades under study, with three more significant
peaks of economic protest in the Czech Republic (public
services employees demanding higher wages in 1998, and
protests against public finance reforms in 2003 and
2008), and two in Slovakia (large pre-election campaigns
in 1994 and against economic reforms of Dzurinda´s
government in 1999).
Figure 1 ABOUT HERE
11
As regards the general protest dynamics in the V4
countries, i.e. how the overall dynamics of protest
compare, we may observe several interesting features (see
Figure 1). First, no significant wave of economic
contention is observed – in terms of within-country
development - in the early days of the economic
transformation in the Visegrad countries, which strongly
corresponds to the ‘patience thesis’ of post-communist
economic transition (see above and Greskovits 1998).
Second, there is only one period when protest in all
countries but one (Hungary) escalated simultaneously,
namely, in the period of 1997-2000. In all three
countries, this is usually attributed to the growing
dissatisfaction with the reform/austerity policies that
were introduced during times of economic difficulty.
Klaus’s (austerity) ‘packages’ in the Czech Republic,
Buzek’s ‘four reforms programme' in Poland, and
Dzurinda’s restrictive measures in Slovakia were a
reaction to an economic slowdown at the end of the first
transformation decade, and in the Czech Republic and
Poland coincided with public dissatisfaction with
politics and the political elite (Stanley 2013,
Mansfeldová 2013). In the Czech Republic this wave
resulted for the first time in the victory of a leftist
party – the Social Democrats – in the national elections
(1998); in Poland one-fifth of the parliamentary mandates
in the 2001 elections was acquired by populist radicals
12
from Self-Defence and Catholic nationalists from the
League of the Polish Families, while the left won the
elections (see Stanley 2013: 180). At the same time, if
we look at the composition of all the protest issues in
this protest wave (not reported here), we see that
socioeconomic issues dominated in Poland, while in the
Czech Republic and Slovakia the portfolio of issues was
much more diverse, which is in line with the general
argument of this chapter (on the diversity of claims in
the Czech Republic in the late 1990s, see also Císař
2013).
Third, the next wave of protest in the V4 countries
can be identified in 2003 and 2004 (in the Czech
Republic, Hungary, and to some extent in Slovakia), which
involved protests against further rounds of economic
reforms and austerity policies. Except for the Czech
Republic in 2008, this protest wave was not repeated
later in the second post-communist decade. The 2008
protest in the Czech Republic was a response to the
public finance reform pushed through by the liberal-right
Topolánek government.
The Dynamics of Protest and Economic Hardships in the V4
Countries
In all four countries major economic reforms started
after the collapse of the old regimes in 1989, although
in two of them – Hungary and Poland – some noticeable
changes had already taken place before 1989. Compared to
13
Hungary’s and Poland’s significant economic changes, only
mild deregulation of economic activities took place
before 1989 in Czechoslovakia.
Czech Republic
In Czechoslovakia, the main economic reforms – namely
privatization, liberalization, restitution, industrial
restructuration, and macroeconomic stabilization – were
adopted in the early 1990s under Prime Minister Václav
Klaus. Klaus combined ideological support for the free
market with active welfare policies; consequently, the
resultant model ‘combined “social-democratic”
entitlements (pensions, family protection) and liberal
incentives for the middle class (voluntary private
pensions and tax breaks)’ (Inglot 2009: 77). Overall,
there was a relatively straightforward reduction in
welfare benefits up to 1996, when the Czech government
started to compensate the ‘losers’ of the transformation
(Greskovits 1998: 137; see Figure 2). This strategy was
finished by the interim government in 1998, and since
then social policies (as indicated by the unemployment
replacement rate, see Figure 2) have remained relatively
stable. In the Czech case, the liberalization strategy
applied sought to build a market from scratch, whereby
97% of state ownership of enterprises in 1989 was
transformed into 80% private ownership of enterprises by
1998 (Shafik 1995; Claessens and Djankov 2002). The Czech
currency became fully convertible in 1995; and in
14
contrast to other post-communist countries and owing to
macroeconomic stabilization policies the inflation rate
did not go through any major fluctuations. However, after
the initial economic expansion of the mid-1990s the first
recession came in 1996 and 1997, while the recovery (in
terms of both GDP and the unemployment rate) was very
slow and lasted basically until 2006, when the liberal-
conservative coalition came to power after eight years of
social-democratic governments. It started to push
neoliberal economic reforms, which came into effect in
2008. The measures consisted of lowering business and
capital taxes and social benefits, raising consumption
taxes, and introducing fees in the healthcare system
(Myant et al. 2013).
While there were twists and turns in the Czech
Republic’s economic development, they seem to have been
related to economic protest only to a certain extent. The
same applies to social benefits. Looking at Figure 2, in
the Czech case the dynamic of protest seemed to follow
the evolution of grievances in the beginning of the
studied period. This applies mostly to the first two
years of the economic transition of the country.
Increasing grievances since the end of the 1990s might
have provided conditions for protest, but they alone are
unable to account for the three waves of protest observed
(1998, 2000, 2003). Rather, the general political
dynamics of the country and its (austerity) policies
provide some clues here.
15
Figure 2 ABOUT HERE
The first peak may be attributed to the 1998
election campaign, since the large strikes were supposed
to provide support for left parties in the elections; the
second one consists of internationalized alter-
globalization protests in Prague, related to the
September meeting of the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and the World Bank in the city and to a miners’
strike; and the third one was formed by protest events
against welfare cuts planned by the social-democratic
government of Vladimír Špidla. Not surprisingly, the
initial efforts of Topolánek´s right government (2006-
2009) to implement large-scale austerity measures without
any significant effort to include social partners (mostly
trade unions) into the negotiations met with serious
opposition. The protests were organized not only by trade
unions and supported by political opposition, but also by
students and universities; a large coalition of civil
society organizations also joined in and co-organized the
protests (see Myant et al. 2013: 397). Given the general
economic situation, which was far from critical, it was
the way the austerity measures were politically designed
and promoted and their lack of legitimacy in the eyes of
the public that most fuelled the protest. The data
clearly suggest that the protest intensified before the
actual impact of the economic crisis on the national
16
economy and as a reaction to the government’s insistence
on pursuing neoliberal reforms without any apparent
consideration of their potential social costs.
Slovakia
While Slovakia shared the economic destiny of the Czech
lands until 1993, its economic development after the
divorce was somewhat different. Compared to its Czech
counterpart, the Slovak level of privatization was much
slower, with about 40% of its domestic GDP produced by
the private sector in 1994 compared to 70-80% in the
Czech Republic (Greskovits 1998: 22). Slovakia’s economic
structure was imbalanced – a legacy of the former
economic partnership among communist countries – towards
heavy industry to an even greater degree than that of the
Czech part of former Czechoslovakia, and the process of
economic transition was slower and more dramatic than in
other countries. The process of post-transition economic
decline in Slovakia began a year after that in the Czech
Republic (1997) and was more lasting and steeper than in
any other V4 country (Inglot 2009; see Figure 2). The
process of economic downfall continued also after Mečiar
´s authoritarian government lost power in 1998, with the
steepest decline occurring in 2000. The country went
through a slow recovery from then until 2007. Economic
reforms were introduced by the second Dzurinda government
(2002-2006) and were aimed at lowering direct tax rates,
introducing pro-market legislation, and attracting
17
foreign investors. As far as social policies are
concerned, the decrease in social benefits (as indicated
by the unemployment replacement rate) was implemented in
a milder manner than in the Czech Republic (for a
different view based on total expenditure on social
protection, see Myant and Drahokoupil 2010: 201). Social
benefits were increased in 1999 (by the large left-right
anti-Mečiar coalition) and then in 2004 (by the second
Dzurinda government).
In Slovakia the relation between economic
conditions, social benefits and protest works in a
fashion very similar to the Czech Republic. Economic
hardships seem to be what create the conditions for
economic protest, and this was most notably the case in
the early 1990s and between 1996 and 2007; however, they
alone are unable to account for particular waves of
economic contention. Like in the Czech case, overall
political dynamics and public policies provide us with a
deeper insight.
The first peak of economic protest was wholly formed
by the parliamentary election campaign (1994) in which
political parties raised economic issues (with the key
party being Mečiar´s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia).
The second wave (1999) was dominated by trade union
demonstrations and events organized by the political
opposition in response to the implementation of two
reform packages by Dzurinda’s first cabinet without
consulting on them with the major trade union federation.
18
Consequently, the trade unions declared their demands
from the government, e.g. lower taxes, wage increases,
and pro-employment policies. When the government again
ignored these demands, large demonstrations ensued. As
Figure 2 clearly shows, the onset of the recent financial
crisis – even though it hit the country relatively hard –
was not marked by any significant increase in protest
activity because the trade unions were included in the
processes of consultation regarding economic policies
(see below).
Poland
Despite the proclaimed ‘shock therapy’ (the so-called
Balcerowicz plan, named after deputy prime minister and
minister of finance Leszek Balcerowicz) the pace of
economic changes in Poland was somewhat slower than in
the Czech Republic, but faster, on the other hand, than
in Slovakia. With respect to economic liberalization, the
level was about the same, while with respect to
privatization, the percentage of GDP produced by the
private sector in 1994 was about 55% (higher than in
Slovakia and lower than in the Czech Republic)
(Greskovits 1998: 22). The economic consequences of the
transition from a centrally planned economy were positive
in terms of economic growth but also brought negative
effects for some parts of the population (especially
people employed in agriculture and the mining industry)
that were partially compensated by protective social
19
policy measures introduced by minister of labour and
social policy in the Suchocka government (1992-1993)
Jacek Kuron (Ekiert and Kubik 2001: 149; Golinowska
2009). The country’s initial economic expansion (in terms
of the unemployment rate and GDP growth) weakened after
1998, when the country was driven into economic problems
by dynamics similar to those in Slovakia; after 2002 the
country started to recover and in 2007 it enjoyed rising
GDP and a declining unemployment rate (Golinowska 2005;
Myant et al. 2013; see Figure 2). There were no
significant downturns or upturns in the evolution of the
state’s strategies towards the ‘losers’ of the
transition: social benefits (as indicated by the
unemployment replacement rate) decreased, but did so in a
relatively smooth and gradual manner.
In Poland, the evolution of economic conditions,
welfare policies and economic protest seem to be related
even less than in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (see
Figure 2). The only period that is consistent with the
assumption of the prominent role played by economic
grievances is at the end of the 1990s, when economic
problems and growing dissatisfaction with the reform
politics of Buzek’s government translated into a wider
backlash that ultimately resulted in a radicalization of
the parliamentary representation (see Figure 2 and
Stanley 2013: 178-179). However, like in the other cases
mentioned above, economic contention seems to reflect not
only socioeconomic developments, but also the way they
20
were dealt with in the form of particular public policies
and more general trends in Polish politics.
There are two major protest peaks: the first one in
1993 was formed by a series of transformation-related
protest campaigns. First, there were the protests against
the Suchocka cabinet’s reforms, such as the generally
contentious process of negotiating the ‘Pact on State
Enterprises’, i.e. the legislative package that created
the tripartite commission and provided the legal
framework for collective bargaining at the national level
and that was originally presented to parliament by
Suchocka’s minister Jacek Kuron (only approved in
February 1994 by the subsequent government formed by ex-
communists; for a detailed overview see Ekiert and Kubik
2001: 148-157). These protests ultimately contributed to
the government’s demise later the same year. Second,
there was the political campaign of Solidarity, which
related first to the election campaign and second and
later on to the fact that ex-communists had won the
elections and entered the government. However, the most
impressive protest wave took place in 1999, and consisted
mostly of protests from physicians, nurses and midwives
against their low pay and deteriorating working
conditions. Another important component in this protest
wave was the farmers’ protests, sparked by the direct
action strategies of the agrarian populist Self-Defence
Party, which entered parliament in 2001 (see Stanley
2013: 180). Protest further fluctuated in the coming
21
years; however, the global Great Recession did not result
in any significant protest activities.
Hungary
The Hungarian case was different from the other V4
countries. Despite the initial high level of
privatization and liberalization and private sector
growth similar to the other V4 countries, the first
economic downturn began earlier (1995), leading to the
introduction of ‘the most severe austerity program thus
far in the country’s postsocialist history’ (Bohle and
Greskovits 2012: 149). Hungary’s substantial foreign debt
and the presence of the IMF played an important role in
the introduction of the so-called Bokros package – named
after its author, minister of finance Lajos Bokros – by
Horn’s socialist government. This programme included
various social benefit cutbacks, a rise in the retirement
age etc. Overall, the transition process was seen as
unproblematic and was positively rated by investors and
international financial institutions (Orenstein 2008).
The policies of stimulating domestic demand subsequently
helped to achieve economic growth and a decreasing
unemployment rate, which continued until 2006. In 2006
Gyurcsány´s socialist government was re-elected while
promising economic ‘reform without austerity measures’ in
order to reduce the budget deficit (Korkut 2010; Myant et
al. 2013). However, the package that was introduced
consisted of a series of cutbacks in the welfare system
22
and led to the subsequent slowdown of the economy in
2007, paving the way to a severe recession.
Like in the other cases, in Hungary general
political developments and particular policies seem to
coincide with economic protest. Looking at Figure 2,
although the periods 1991-1997 and 2006-2008 in
particular suggest economic grievances played a prominent
role, it was through particular political steps and their
resultant policies that they were translated into
protest.
The first significant protest wave occurred as early
as 1991 and was largely related to the conservative
government’s preparation of the new Labour Code, which
specified among others the role of trade unions in
collective bargaining. The second protest peak was in
2004 and involved protests organized nationwide mostly by
farming associations and trade unions representing
agricultural workers who were mainly demanding increased
government funding and subsidies prior to the country's
EU accession (1st May 2004). Although there was a lot of
well-recorded anti-government protest activity after the
fall 2006 leak of Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány’s
secret party meeting speech earlier that year, leading to
the demise of the centre-left and a strengthening of
right-wing radicals (see Kurkut 2010; Tóka and Popa 2013:
311-312; Kriesi 2014: 359-360), the onset of the Great
Recession in Hungary in 2009 does not stand out in our
data on the magnitude of economic protest (for a more
23
detailed discussion, see the section on the Great
Recession below).
Economic Protest across V4 Countries
As demonstrated in the sections above, the socioeconomic
transition of the Visegrad countries after the fall of
socialism has many important similarities when looking at
their development in time (see, for example, also Inglot
2009). How similar are they when compared across them?
According to Bohle and Greskovits (2012: 140-141),
although there were three major differences between these
countries at the beginning of the transition, namely,
while in Poland and Hungary economic liberalization
started well before 1989, and they both became heavily
externally indebted, but stable in terms of their
statehood, Czechoslovakia kept its rigid centrally
planned system until 1989, was not indebted and in 1993
split into two parts, the Czech and Slovak republics, but
at the end of the day, they formed a single regime of
political economy. This so-called embedded neoliberalism
has been based on relatively generous welfare programmes
and generally ‘the search for compromises between market
transformation and social cohesion’ (ibid: 22).
Still, using our socioeconomic indicators, there are
differences between the countries (see Table 1). Likewise
they are different, probably surprisingly, in terms of
their economic protest magnitude. Hence, can
24
socioeconomic variables help explain different protest
levels across the countries?
If compared in terms of their average protest
magnitude, the four countries split into two groups: one
less contentious and one more contentious. While the
Czech Republic and Slovakia display low levels of protest
(the average values of the Tilly’s index are 19 and 20
respectively, standardized for the population size),
Hungary and Poland are comparatively much more
contentious (1009 and 710 respectively, standardized for
the population size). Here we focus on a possible
explanation for this remarkable difference between the
two groups of countries (see Table 1).
Looking at grievances across the countries, the
indicator displays its highest value in the case of
Slovakia, followed by Poland. However, Slovakia does not
belong to the pair of contentious countries. Similarly,
looking at our indicator of social benefits, it shows
almost the same values for the Czech Republic and
Hungary, which, however, behave very differently in terms
of economic protest, the Czech Republic being the least
and Hungary the most contentious country among our cases.
Reflecting on the problems with extant accounts of
economic contention, in the theory part of the chapter we
hypothesized the overall structure of political conflict
to explain the observed difference. While in the Czech
Republic and Slovakia a socioeconomic cleavage forms one
of the main conflict lines in the party politics field,
25
in the other two countries this cleavage is either not
among the most important lines (Poland), or has basically
never existed as a structuring principle of party
politics (Hungary).
Table 1 ABOUT HERE
In the Czech Republic, a socioeconomic cleavage was
constituted as the main conflict line in the new
democratic field of party politics soon after 1989 (see
Mansfeldová 2013: 221) and it has remained so since then
(Kopecký 2007: 120). Accordingly, economic interests have
mainly been articulated in the field of institutionalized
politics in the Czech Republic, which has had the effect
of depressing the average magnitude of economic protest
in the field of contentious politics. Although the Czech
Republic was established in 1993 as one of the successor
states of former Czechoslovakia, an open nationalist
mobilization never played a significant role in the
country, and all potentially nationalist claims withered
away with the partition of the former Czechoslovak
federation (Mansfeldová 2013: 234-236).
Compared to its Czech counterpart, nationalist
claims acquired stronger salience in Slovakia in the
early 1990s, ultimately resulting in the ‘Velvet divorce’
of 1993. In this respect, the nationalist cleavage
structured the Slovak party political field in a much
more pronounced way; on the other hand, even the
26
nationalism of the early 1990s had its economic side,
since it was partly framed in terms of the economic
hardships unequally distributed between the two parts of
the federation. Owing to the location of heavy industry
in Slovakia, it was hit by the transformation’s policies
more heavily than the Czech part. Still, due to the
belated nation building process and the presence of the
Hungarian minority in Southern Slovakia, nationalism
continued to play a structuring role in Slovak party
politics even after the establishment of the independent
state (Kopecký 2007: 122-124). The economic cleavage
constituted itself as the main conflict line only at the
beginning of the second post-communist decade, after the
semi-authoritarian experiment of Prime Minister Mečiar
came to a close at the end of the 1990s. After the issues
of stateness and foreign policy orientation of the new
country had been resolved, the conflict over economic
issues started to significantly shape the field of
political parties’ articulation, ‘without abandoning the
national appeals altogether’ (Deegan-Krause 2013: 276).
Although there was a seeming twist ‘back’ to nationalism
at the end of the second decade, it could not equal the
salience of its 1990s predecessor, and remained more
symbolic in nature (ibid: 272-273).
While the economic cleavage played an important role
in structuring party politics in both the Czech and,
later on, Slovak republics, in Poland it became
‘embedded’ in a much more complicated conflict pattern.
27
This pattern was based more on diverging interpretations
of basic religious and civilizational values, including
not only the conflict between secular and confessional
views but also contrasting perspectives on the Polish
communist past, than on different models of political
economy: ‘in the language of Polish politics this
ideological cleavage, not the socio-economic one, is
defined as the left-right dimension’ (Jasiewicz 2007:
88). In the first decade, the ‘regime divide’ (communism
vs. anticommunism) was the most visibly articulated
division, to be replaced in salience by the conflict over
the politics of post-communist transition itself in the
second decade (Stanley 2013: 168). For the Polish
conservative right of the second decade, the left and
liberals of the first transition period presented not
only a diverging model of socioeconomic development, but
also a serious civilizational threat to the very
existence of the Polish nation and its core values. As a
result, these forces, especially from the Law and Justice
Party and the League of Polish Families, prioritized
‘“moral revolution” and the “politics of history”’ at the
expense of economic issues (ibid: 185).
A similar picture is found in the field of Hungarian
party politics, where economic issues never attained the
degree of salience comparable to what they had in the
Czech Republic and Slovakia. Tóka and Popa (2013: 318)
aptly sum up: ‘economic policy issues and social class
played a minor role in party competition… non-economic
28
issues defined party positions, inter-party distances and
electoral behavior’. They add that for the period up
until 2010, socioeconomic issues have not displayed ‘any
truly consistent relationship with the policy positions
of the parties’ (ibid.). Instead of the economic
cleavage, a socio-cultural division between the
Christian-national, anti-communist and agrarian camp, on
one hand, and secular, cosmopolitan, and urban parties,
on the other, has consistently structured the Hungarian
field of party politics (see ibid: 302), creating a space
for the articulation of economic interests in the field
of contentious politics. Hungary thus represents the
exact opposite of the Czech Republic, where
institutionalized actors in the field of party politics
crowded potential protest actors out of the articulation
space in the field of contention.
Implications for the Great Recession
The spillover of the banking crisis in the United States
and the subsequent economic crisis in 2008 hit the V4
countries in different ways, partially because of their
different economic background, structures of their
economies and the actual state of their economic
development. The steepest economic decline in terms of
GDP growth was experienced in Slovakia (by nearly 11%),
closely followed by the Czech and Hungarian economies
(nearly 8%). By contrast, the Polish economy suffered
much less, experiencing a decline of 3.5%. Extending our
29
argument to the Great Recession, we should not expect
higher levels of protest to be found in Slovakia and the
Czech Republic, since, even though they were hit by the
crisis, economic demands would find their way into
politics via institutionalized means. We should also find
no response in Poland, which was affected comparatively
mildly. Only Hungary was hit comparatively substantially
and due to the structure of its political field this
allowed for a big protest wave.
The responses of the governments to the crisis
differed: the Czech (Topolánek´s) government clearly
followed a neoliberal strategy and used the notion of
crisis to legitimize further liberalization and fiscal
cuts in economic, healthcare and social policies, while
the budget deficit and state debt appeared to be the
government’s only concern (Draxler 2014). The Slovak
(Fico´s) government reacted to the crisis in a Keynesian
manner: it increased state spending (public sector wages,
social spending and investment), while limiting the
impact of the austerity package (which mostly applied to
the financial sector, business policy and the labour
market). Also, in contrast to the Czech case, these steps
were systematically consulted within the tripartite
structure and particular interest groups were invited to
approve anti-crisis measures (Myant et al. 2013: 399).
Despite its clear right-wing orientation, the Polish
(Tusk´s) government took a more pragmatic stance and like
Slovakia took into account the potential social costs of
30
the austerity measures and invited different
representatives of social interests to participate in the
discussion of anti-crisis policies. These included mostly
an increase in public-sector wages, employment
legislation amendments, a tax reduction for businesses,
and an increase in the co-financing of EU-funded
developmental projects (ibid: 398). The position of the
Hungarian socialist (Gyurcsány´s and Bajnai´s) government
in 2008 and 2009 was different from Poland in terms of
the external pressures it had to deal with: owing to the
external financing and vulnerability of its key financial
institutions the crisis was already affecting the country
in 2008. The government had to approach the IMF and the
EU and negotiate a rescue package that was granted under
strict fiscal conditions. These were met mostly by
introducing cuts in the number of public-sector employees
and cuts to pensions and welfare benefits. The austerity
policies were formally consulted with business
associations, economists and trade unions, but the latter
de facto could not exert any influence on the outcomes of
the negotiation (ibid).
As expected, there was no increase in protest in the
Czech Republic, Slovakia, or Poland. Yet, there was no
increase in economic contention visible in our data in
the Hungarian case either, which seems to contradict our
main argument (see Figure 2 and above). However, this
probably has more to do with the way economic contention
is defined and coded in our chapter than with the actual
31
lack of contention (cf. Kriesi 2014: 359-360). Since in
Hungary recession-related grievances were also framed as
issues of government, its functioning and corruption,
they are not reflected in the data presented here. If we
look at these types of governance/state-related issues
(not reported here), there indeed was an increase in the
last five years in Hungary, with the peak occurring in
2006-2007.
Conclusions
In this chapter we focused on economic contention in four
very similar post-communist countries, which differ,
however, in terms of the magnitude of their economic
protest. After mapping the existing debate on this
subject, we looked at the dynamics of protest. Supporting
Kriesi’s (2014) results, our case studies demonstrate
that economic grievances, rather than being directly
reflected in collective action, are translated into such
action (indirectly) through austerity policies that
address perceived (or deliberately framed) economic
problems. Moreover, as the Czech case illustrates,
austerity policies may produce collective mobilization
even without corresponding problems in the economy.
Further, we looked at the varying levels of economic
contention across the countries, identifying problems
with current explanations for this. Therefore, we
proposed explaining the differences in economic protest
across the countries by the differences in the structure
32
of their political fields. While in the Czech Republic
and Slovakia economic issues found their way into
politics mainly through the field of political parties,
in Hungary and Poland these issues did not structure the
party politics field and were instead articulated in the
field of contentious politics. As discussed in the
previous section, the same argument seems to fit the
current period of austerity.
Regarding economic issues, our chapter demonstrated
the existence of a substitutive/countervailing relation
between the party politics field and contentious
collective action in the studied countries. As a result,
the chapter potentially represents a challenge to a
fairly generally accepted prediction of the political
opportunity structure-based theories, which in this area
expect that the presence of (socioeconomically defined)
left-wing political parties fosters economic contention.
By showing that the articulation of a socioeconomic
cleavage in the party politics field suppresses economic
contention, our chapter intends to contribute to the
current broader debates on the interaction between social
fields in general and party and contentious politics
fields in particular.
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the CzechScience Foundation (grants ‘Collective Action and Protestin East-Central Europe’, code GAP404/11/0462, and‘Protestors in Context: An Integrated and ComparativeAnalysis of Democratic Citizenship in the Czech
33
Republic’, code GA13-29032S). This work was alsosupported by the project ‘Employment of Newly GraduatedDoctors of Science for Scientific Excellence’(CZ.1.07/2.3.00/30.0009), co-financed by the EuropeanSocial Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic.We are especially thankful to Kateřina Vráblíková, SwenHutter, Jan Drahokoupil and this volume’s editors fortheir helpful comments on earlier drafts of the chapter.All potential problems and omissions are our own.
34
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Tables
Table 1: Main Indicators across the Countries
Economicprotest magnitude
Grievances
Social benefits
Articulated economiccleavage
Czech R.
19 - 4,14 53,8 + +
Slovakia
20 - 10,44 61,4 +
Poland 710 - 9,84 31,8 -Hungary 1009 - 7,1 48 - -Note: Annual averages (except for the last column)
40
Figures
Figure 1: Economic Protest in the V4 countries (Tilly Index, 1991-2010, standardized for the population size)
Figure 2: Economic grievances, social benefits and economic protest
41